Intro to How We Got the Bible

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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January 10, 2018

00:00: Well, I want to invite you to open your notes.
00:04: We have a pretty long set of notes tonight.
00:13: As most of you know, we have been in a series and are in a series on the subject of apologetics, which apologetics is defending the faith.
00:23: Apologetics means to make a defense for what we believe or to give a defense for the hope that is within us.
00:32: And this is the second part of this series.
00:36: In our first series, we dealt with questions about the integrity of the Bible.
00:40: We looked at the fact that the Bible is the most well-attested work of antiquity.
00:45: We noted that there are more copies of the ancient New Testament manuscripts by far than any other work of antiquity and that those copies go back within one and two generations of the originals.
00:58: And we pointed to the fact that those who attack the Bible's integrity and accuracy to the original do so generally out of ignorance of the facts.
01:08: And yet, people still attack the Bible.
01:12: With all that I just said, with all of the truth of the integrity of the history of the text, it's still the most attacked book in the world.
01:25: Attacking the accuracy and integrity of the Bible is common among those who deny the truth of the Christian faith, but also, sadly, it is too common within the church, especially among those that would be identified with the more liberal wings of Christianity.
01:48: And there's liberalism everywhere.
01:51: There are liberal Methodists, there are liberal Presbyterians, there are liberal Episcopalians, there are even liberal Baptists.
02:01: And people often think of Baptists as being a pretty conservative group, but there are liberal Baptists.
02:09: I had this in my sermon notes for Sunday just to mention, some of you may not know who Albert Moeller is, but Albert Moeller is the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the flagship seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention.
02:26: Well, he became the seminary president in the early 90s.
02:31: When he went there to become the president, having been voted on by the trustees and all, many who were conservative men, he was absolutely hated by the student body and by most of the professors who were liberal.
02:49: And to the point that he and his wife would go to restaurants in town and people would shout ugly things at them.
02:57: Their children were mistreated in events where children were allowed to go.
03:03: And I mean, the stories are legendary, how much he had to fight just the first few years just to be heard.
03:13: The graduation that he preached at, the graduating class stood up and turned around.
03:19: I mean, that's how much there was to face.
03:25: So as I said, it's sad to know that there are those who attack the Bible from outside the church.
03:30: It's more sad to know that there are people who attack the Bible from within the church.
03:36: And in 1985, the Jesus Seminar was organized.
03:45: The Jesus Seminar was organized to seek to find the, quote, historic Jesus.
03:51: Their goal was to examine and review the sayings and deeds attributed to Jesus in the Gospels and determine which ones were true, which ones were authentic.
04:03: I want a quote from their website.
04:06: The seminar met twice a year to debate technical papers that were prepared and circulated in advance.
04:12: At the close of debate on each agenda item, fellows voted using colored beads to indicate the degree of authenticity of the words and deeds attributed to Jesus in the Gospels.
04:23: Dropping colored beads into a box soon became the trademark of the Jesus Seminar.
04:27: And among the findings is that in the judgment of the Jesus Seminar fellows, about 18% of the sayings and 16% of the deeds attributed to Jesus in the Gospel are authentic.
04:42: Only 18% of what he said and only 16% of what he did in the Gospels is true, according to the Jesus Seminar scholars.
04:56: And I remember my first year as pastor here at Sovereign Grace, which was then Forest Christian, I received an invitation in the mail.
05:04: And I get invitations all the time, even now.
05:05: I get invitations to all kinds of things.
05:08: And one of the invitations I received was to go to a seminar with one of the leaders of the Jesus Seminar.
05:16: He was having a seminar here in town.
05:18: His name is John Dominic Crossan.
05:20: And John Dominic Crossan was being hosted by a local Disciples of Christ church.
05:26: And he was there and he was basically teaching a seminar about the authentic Jesus.
05:34: And this is one of the things that Crossan believes.
05:36: He believes most of the Gospel was made up by the early church and in an attempt to sell people on reasons to believe in Jesus.
05:44: He believes that Jesus was a mortal man, conceived the natural way, and that he performed no miracles and he was killed and was probably eaten by dogs.
05:52: That his body was buried in a shallow grave and probably eaten by dogs.
05:59: Now it doesn't amaze me that an unbeliever would, and that's what I would say about Crossan, he's an unbeliever, it doesn't amaze me that an unbeliever would say something like that.
06:07: What amazes me is that a church would host him to teach.
06:12: And to call it a church I guess is a bit of a stretch at that point.
06:19: Well because the attacks against the Bible are so prevalent from outside and from inside the church, it's important in apologetics that we have an understanding of how we got the Bible.
06:33: I really believe that this one subject alone, if you know this subject, if you know the history of the church and the history of the Bible, I think you'll be able to answer so much of the questions that come to you from unbelievers, because a lot of it circle around this book.
06:52: Unbelievers know that our foundation of the faith is on this book.
06:56: Unbelievers know that our foundation for what we believe in comes from the Bible.
07:01: So they know if they're going to make an attack that's going to stick, they're going to have to attack right here.
07:11: Important questions that we need to answer are ones like this.
07:15: Where did the Bible come from and who wrote it? How do you know what they wrote is what is still here today? How do we know that this is, when we read the book of Matthew, how do we know that that's the same thing that he wrote? How do we know it hasn't been changed? Are you sure that no wholesale changes, additions or subtractions have been made to the text? Why does the Bible only contain 66 books, not 67 or 55 or 10? Why do certain Bibles contain an entire library that's missing from this Bible? It's called the Apocrypha or the Deuterocanonical books.
08:00: Why are there so many translations and some of those translations disagree with one another? If the Bible is really from God, why can't Bible teachers agree on what it says? So I would say those are some questions that we ought to at least be able to give an answer to.
08:24: And I'm not expecting you all to necessarily be able to give an answer that is, you know, some of these questions are really difficult.
08:35: But I would say this, you know, I think that you should know enough about the history of the text that you can engage questions like this, that you can engage inquiries like this.
08:44: And you may have to tell somebody, hey, I don't remember everything, but I can get back to you, but you'll know that you've been taught these things.
08:51: You'll know that you've heard these answers before.
08:55: I don't remember everything.
08:57: You know what I do? I keep notes in my phone.
09:01: I do.
09:01: I keep notes like for Mormons.
09:04: I keep notes in my phone for if I'm going to deal with a Mormon.
09:08: There's actually a website that's very helpful.
09:11: CARM.org, Christian Apologetics Research Ministry.org, Matt Slick puts out a website that has great material.
09:19: And I link to his page.
09:20: And if I know that I'm going to be dealing with Muslims or something or Mormons or whatever, I can go there and get like a quick refresher and remind myself of some of the things that I might want to say.
09:31: So, I mean, that's what I'm saying is I don't expect you to remember everything.
09:34: I don't remember everything, but know that you've been taught these things and that there's answers to these inquiries.
09:40: There are responses to these difficult questions, and some of them are more difficult than others.
09:47: One of the favorite questions I was ever asked or one of the favorite statements I ever heard, and it's only my favorite because it was so, it was boiling over with ignorance.
09:59: But so I've never forgotten it.
10:01: I remember where I was.
10:02: I was at Pizza Hut on Dunn Avenue eating dinner with a family.
10:07: And there was a friend of the family that was there.
10:09: And she was sort of just sort of speaking out of turn about the Bible.
10:16: And she made this statement.
10:19: She said, I wish I could get my hands on a Bible from before King James came along and made all those changes.
10:33: Now, now, now, here's the thing that that's I'm going to tell you, that statement by itself is just it's a stunning lack of understanding of history.
10:48: But it is not unique.
10:51: I hear things like that all the time, spend any amount of time reading comments on on social media pages, and you'll see that level of ignorance is far surpassed.
11:08: And if you consider what her assumptions are in that, the assumptions that she's making, one, there have been changes made to the Bible to King James had direct involvement in making those changes.
11:17: And three, we do not have any Bibles that predate the King James to which we can compare it.
11:22: All three of those things are not only wrong.
11:24: They're desperately ignorant.
11:26: And yet that's the assumptions that she's making by making such a broad claim, and nobody challenged her.
11:33: Everybody says, yeah, sounds good to me.
11:39: I was too far away.
11:40: I was on the other end of the table, but I was like, really? But I'll never forget hearing it because the statement was made with such confidence.
11:53: Ignorance is often accompanied by so much confidence and confident ignorance is dangerous.
12:03: Well, my goal over the next several weeks is to do a series on how we got the Bible as part of the apologetic series, because I think, again, this is the foundation.
12:13: If you're going to believe in something, you should know why you believe in it and you should be able to give a reason for why you believe in it.
12:22: Why can we have accuracy and the integrity and accuracy? Why can we have confidence in the accuracy and integrity of the text? And I want to answer some of the most common apologetic questions regarding the Bible.
12:32: So this is going to be part history lesson, part theology lesson, part Bible lesson.
12:41: But hopefully over the next several weeks, it'll be beneficial.
12:45: What I've done tonight is I've given you an outline of basically what we're going to be going through over the next few weeks.
12:54: It won't be exactly following this outline, but this is an outline of how we got the Bible start to finish.
13:05: And tonight we're going to do the overview of it.
13:08: And then in the weeks to come, I'm going to break down each constituent part and look at each part.
13:14: But let's look first at the very first thing on your list.
13:17: It says here, you know, it's important in apologetics that we have an understanding of how we got the Bible.
13:22: The first blank is Revelation.
13:31: Revelation.
13:35: Revelation is God communicating to his creatures what he wants them to know.
13:41: Revelation is God communicating to his creatures what he wants them to know.
13:48: Here's something that you need to understand.
13:50: We wouldn't know anything if God didn't communicate with us.
13:56: And you say, now, wait a minute.
14:00: Unbelievers know things.
14:02: Does God communicate with them? Yes.
14:05: Go ahead.
14:09: That's right.
14:10: Everything we know comes from him.
14:12: It comes to us through revelation.
14:15: And there's two types of revelation.
14:17: Now, next week's lesson is going to break this down.
14:19: So you don't really have to you don't have to write this down if you don't want to.
14:22: But I want to tell you, there's two types of revelation.
14:24: Next week, I'm going to really break these down.
14:25: But there's general revelation and special revelation.
14:28: General revelation is revelation that all men receive by the very fact that they can look out their window or they can look out into the world in front of them and they can see a world that shows the the marks of design.
14:45: It shows the marks of a designer.
14:49: The Bible says in Romans one that the reason why all men will be judged guilty at judgment is because they can see in creation that God does exist.
15:02: The fool has said in his heart, there is no God, according to the psalmist.
15:10: So we know that all men have general revelation, but not all men have special revelation.
15:17: Special revelation comes by a direct intervention of God.
15:25: Now for a second, and again, we're going to go over this more next week, but for a second, what is an example of special revelation? Anybody? What's an example of special revelation? Okay, a theophany is a good example of a special revelation from God.
15:59: We would say that that is God directly speaking to someone.
16:03: That's a special revelation.
16:05: And we see that with Adam.
16:07: We see that with Noah.
16:09: In fact, just to point out something, and I love to show this to people because I think people miss this often.
16:14: If you look at time as if it were a long line, and you know Jesus in the cross is here, and you are here.
16:21: You've been in the mall and they say, you know, you're here.
16:23: You're at the X.
16:24: You're at the furthest point of the line.
16:27: But we'll say this is creation.
16:29: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
16:32: Somewhere around here is when we got those Ten Commandments from Moses.
16:37: Right? When those Ten Commandments came from Moses, that introduces written revelation.
16:47: Prior to this, all the way back to here, there is no written revelation from God.
16:54: The only thing possible is the book of Job.
16:58: It is possible that the book of Job predates the writings of Moses.
17:02: But we don't know that for certain.
17:06: That's a conjecture based on use of language, the way things were described in Job.
17:13: Historically, the only possible book that would have predated the writings of Moses would have been Job.
17:19: So, even if, that would have put it somewhere in here.
17:26: So, all of this time, God did not have written revelation.
17:33: What did He have? Direct revelation.
17:38: Direct revelation by His Word.
17:40: He spoke to men.
17:43: Or He spoke to people through a man.
17:48: We call those prophets.
17:50: Right? So, there's three types of revelation.
17:53: There's direct God speaking to someone, as He did with Moses.
17:58: There's God speaking through someone, as He did with Moses to the people.
18:03: And then there's God speaking to masses of people through the writings of that one, as He did with Moses when Moses wrote the Word.
18:11: Right? There's a good example of how Moses experienced all three.
18:16: Okay? But revelation begins with God communicating with His people what He wants them to know.
18:30: If God didn't communicate with us at all, we would be absolutely lost.
18:36: We would be absolutely lost.
18:38: So, I told you a long time ago, I'm a presuppositionalist.
18:45: I presume certain things are true.
18:47: I presume that God exists, because I believe if God didn't exist, I don't believe we could make sense of the world.
18:53: So, that's what God is to me, and I believe to all of us.
19:01: We assume His existence because the rest of the world makes sense.
19:08: He's there.
19:10: And how many of you ever heard of...
19:11: Oh, boy.
19:12: What's His name? Oh, now I'm going to kick myself because I can't think of His name.
19:17: There was a theologian in the 60s who wrote a book called He is There and He is Not Silent.
19:24: Tell me who it is.
19:25: Schaeffer, thank you.
19:26: I knew you'd know.
19:27: Alright.
19:29: So, you've got Schaeffer writes this book, He is There and He is Not Silent.
19:35: It's a great book if you have a chance ever to...
19:38: It's not light reading by any imagination.
19:40: But it talks about the fact that God speaks and He reveals Himself to all people.
19:47: But He speaks and reveals Himself specifically in His word to us.
19:51: And that's revelation.
19:53: And everything we know about the world, everything we know about heaven and earth and the afterlife and this life and everything that matters comes by revelation from God.
20:02: So, if you're going to defend the Bible, you first have to understand that the Bible is a revelation from God.
20:16: It's God telling us what He wants us to know.
20:20: It's why I believe in the integrity of the Bible.
20:22: It's why I believe that we actually have the right books that we're supposed to have.
20:26: Because I believe that God gave it to us and He has protected it and provided what was necessary to get it to us.
20:37: I believe He wanted me to know what He said.
20:40: So, I believe He providentially cared enough to make sure that that happened.
20:45: Is that on faith? Yes, I'm taking that on faith.
20:47: It's a theological statement that I believe that God wants me to know His will and His will is found in this book.
20:56: And so, He's going to make sure this book is exactly what I need.
21:01: So, revelation is the starting point.
21:04: Faith in revelation begins our understanding of what the Bible is.
21:10: It is God's revelation of Himself.
21:13: The second thing goes along with the first.
21:19: The Bible is God's written revelation of Himself.
21:29: As we said earlier, prior to Moses, there was no written revelation except possibly Job.
21:38: Why did God want His revelation written down? Absolutely, I believe that's true.
21:50: The Bible is an amazing reality.
21:58: I want you to think about this.
21:59: People often times will say, man is the great ape.
22:05: And they talk about us as simply being the highest in the evolutionary order.
22:09: And they'll see a monkey or an ape holding a stick and using the stick to poke at a hive of honey so that it can knock the bees out or something.
22:24: And they'll say, see there's the ape using a tool.
22:28: And that's the proto-evolutionary of what we are.
22:35: That's proto-evolution.
22:36: See, that's Him learning that a tool works.
22:41: And so that's what gave rise to man.
22:45: But I want to tell you something.
22:51: We don't just whack honey hives with sticks.
22:58: We sent a man to the moon.
23:00: Hey, we sent a monkey to space.
23:02: But he didn't have nothing to do with it.
23:05: And you got to think that was wild for him.
23:07: But what I'm saying is we have the ability to communicate so well that we can take the very sounds that we make.
23:23: Attribute written symbols that relate to that sound.
23:29: That mean when we see the L, we know that's the La sound.
23:32: We see the M, we know that's the Ma sound.
23:34: And we're able to put that into words.
23:36: And those words become paragraphs.
23:37: And those paragraphs become works of literature.
23:40: That ability is amazing.
23:44: And that's the method that God chose to communicate Himself to the masses.
23:55: Because communicating one-on-one.
23:57: Could God communicate with everybody one-on-one? Absolutely.
24:01: He chooses not to.
24:02: Could God communicate to everybody through one man? It would be hard for one man to be a prophet to everyone.
24:13: You know, Moses was a prophet to a nation.
24:15: But even he said, I need help.
24:17: And they brought in the elders and he got help to minister to the nation.
24:21: And he got worn out.
24:23: There were times when he was ready to throw in the towel.
24:25: Because it was so hard to be God's prophet to a nation.
24:29: So God gives us the written revelation of Himself.
24:33: So that the written revelation goes out to the nation and to the world.
24:38: The written revelation is a powerful example of God's desire to have His word and will known.
24:47: Why would God, I've heard people say this.
24:50: Why would God confine Himself to a book? He hasn't confined Himself to a book.
24:58: He's given the book as it were a gift.
25:03: Because for thousands of years that's been the only form of communication that goes out.
25:09: You realize television is pretty young.
25:13: Radio maybe a little older than that.
25:17: But the written word.
25:20: The written word has been the form of communication for thousands of years.
25:28: It's an amazing thing.
25:29: Did God choose to use this as a method for getting His message to men? The written revelation of Himself.
25:38: Alright.
25:40: I've got to go faster because I have a lot more blanks.
25:43: I get excited.
25:45: Number three.
25:46: The Bible is the product of God superintending human writers to compose and record His revelation.
25:54: Which is generally called inspiration.
26:04: Inspiration.
26:11: You've heard that before.
26:15: It's 2 Timothy 3.16.
26:17: In the King James Bible.
26:19: All scripture is inspired by God.
26:23: I personally don't like the word inspired.
26:27: Because the Greek there actually is theanoustos.
26:30: And it means to breathe out.
26:31: And it's God breathing out His word.
26:37: And the word itself is what is breathed out by God.
26:42: If you want to use the word inspired.
26:44: It's the word itself that's inspired.
26:45: One of the things that's often confusing.
26:48: And people say this.
26:49: And I've probably said it too.
26:51: In error.
26:53: Because I do make mistakes.
26:55: People will say well Paul was inspired to write Romans.
27:00: That's actually not technically correct.
27:04: The word is inspired.
27:05: Not the person.
27:07: The person is carried along by the spirit to write the word.
27:11: And the word is inspired by God.
27:14: And the reason why I make that distinction.
27:16: Because you hear people say about like music.
27:18: Oh I heard this song and I was inspired to paint a painting.
27:22: Or I prayed a prayer and God inspired me to write this book.
27:27: And some people take that as the same type of thing.
27:31: As Paul being inspired to write Romans.
27:33: Or Luke being inspired to write one of the Gospels.
27:35: Not the same thing.
27:38: And inspiration like that is more like a feeling of emotional impulse or push.
27:44: It's a feeling of excitement.
27:48: And to be inspired in that way is still valuable.
27:51: I don't take anything away from when somebody says I was inspired to paint.
27:54: Or inspired to write.
27:55: Or inspired to sing.
27:55: That's not a bad thing.
27:57: But it's not the same thing.
27:59: As when we say the Bible is inspired by God.
28:02: It's inspired in the sense that God super intended the writing.
28:07: To ensure that what we received is His word.
28:12: Yes sir.
28:20: Yeah if you want to read it.
28:22: Or do you have it there? It's a passage I mentioned.
28:26: It says that the Holy Spirit carried men along.
28:30: But you can look at it if you want to and read it.
28:32: But that passage tells us how God did it.
28:36: It says that God carried holy men.
28:41: Were used by the Spirit to write down His word.
28:47: Okay do you have it brother? Do you want to read? Knowing this first.
28:53: That no prophecy in Scripture is of any private interest.
28:58: For prophecy never came by the will of man.
29:01: But holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.
29:06: Yeah absolutely.
29:07: Holy men spoke.
29:09: And the Scripture was written as men of God were moved by the Spirit.
29:14: And that passage about personal interpretation.
29:17: That's talking about the fact that nothing in the Bible came about as a result of somebody's own will or whim.
29:24: It came about from God's revelation.
29:29: Alright now number four.
29:31: Moving right along because we have how many? Nine.
29:35: So moving right along.
29:37: Number four.
29:39: The Bible is made up of only the books God inspired.
29:43: And those books alone comprise what's called the canon.
29:51: The canon.
30:01: Sometimes you'll hear me say the canon of Scripture.
30:05: It's not something we use a lot in the normal vernacular.
30:11: But the canon of Scripture is essentially...
30:15: Canon is a measuring rod.
30:17: That's a term that's used for a measuring rod.
30:19: Or something that's to determine the boundaries of something.
30:25: And the canon of Scripture is essentially the books that should be there and the books that shouldn't.
30:31: So for instance in the first century there were people who wrote things that didn't go in the Bible.
30:41: The Epistle of Barnabas is not in your Bible.
30:44: But it was a first century writing from one of the first century missionaries.
30:49: Barnabas was a missionary.
30:50: Missionary Apostle Paul.
30:51: You can read it.
30:52: You can go find it.
30:53: But it's never been considered by the church as part of the canon.
30:57: As part of sacred Scripture.
31:00: There's the writings of several other early fathers and things like that.
31:05: And there are what we have is the collection of early church fathers.
31:08: That's an entire library of writings from Clement and Irenaeus and all these other men.
31:14: Who wrote within the last part of the first century and throughout the second and third centuries.
31:19: We have a library of early church fathers that we don't call Scripture.
31:24: The canon of Scripture is what we believe God inspired.
31:35: Now the big question on this.
31:40: Again I told you I'm going to do a week on each of these.
31:42: So I don't want to go too far with every one.
31:46: But how many of you have ever heard of the Apocrypha? You realize the Apocrypha is an entire set of books.
31:54: Tobit, Judah.
31:56: More chapters of Esther and Daniel.
31:58: The book of Maccabees.
31:59: The book of Wisdom of Solomon.
32:00: The book of Sirach.
32:01: The book of Baruch.
32:02: The prayer of Manasseh.
32:03: Those are all books that are not in your Bible.
32:06: Unless you have a Bible that has the Apocrypha in it.
32:09: Most Protestants don't have that.
32:13: Those books fill the time in general between Malachi and Matthew.
32:21: Which is about a 400 year period where we do not believe God gave revelation of himself.
32:30: But there is still history that happened in those times.
32:33: The war of the Maccabees and all those things that happened.
32:36: And that's what we believe those books to be.
32:38: Some of them we believe to be just Jewish writings.
32:43: But not necessarily Scripture.
32:46: When we get to that lesson, I'll help you understand more as to why we don't accept it as Scripture.
32:50: But for the simple fact, if you want the answer tonight in a very simple way.
32:54: I don't believe the Jews ever accepted them as Scripture.
32:58: They were not considered a part of the sacred text among the Jewish people.
33:02: And so I would argue that's why Protestants today still maintain that we don't accept them as Scripture.
33:12: Because Jesus, there's not references in the New Testament to the Apocrypha.
33:18: There's all kinds of reasons why.
33:19: But Jesus had a text that he talked about as the word of God.
33:23: I don't believe it included the Apocrypha.
33:25: So that would be one of the arguments against its inclusion.
33:30: However, this is an interesting conversation.
33:32: If you ever have somebody who wants to argue about the King James Version of the Bible.
33:36: And they'll say that you should only use the 1611 King James Version of the Bible.
33:45: Remind them that the 1611 King James Version of the Bible had the Apocrypha in it.
33:52: And the ones they're using today don't.
33:56: Yes, sir.
34:00: They don't.
34:13: The Blaney Revision is the one they're using today.
34:19: 1769 Blaney Revision of the King James.
34:21: It's not the same as the 1611.
34:22: But you'll hear men say, 1611 King James Bible.
34:26: And I'll say, what about the Book of Tobit? It's not in there.
34:32: It was in the 1611.
34:36: So that's going to be part of that conversation when we talk about that.
34:41: Number five.
34:42: The canon of Scripture is not a direct revelation, but rather an artifact of revelation.
34:48: As I said, when I get to this lesson.
34:53: Artifact is the blank.
34:55: When I get to this lesson, I'll be able to break this down more.
35:01: But this is simply what I mean by that.
35:03: When I say that the canon of Scripture is not revelation itself, but is an artifact of revelation.
35:11: What I'm saying is that nowhere did God send down a golden plate of a list that said, Okay, it's going to be Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Job.
35:31: He didn't have a list that he sent down from heaven as revelation.
35:41: But God did inspire some books and not others.
35:46: Do we agree with that? Do we agree that God didn't inspire every book ever written? But God did inspire some books that have been written.
36:00: By the very nature of inspiration, God produces a canon by artifact.
36:08: It exists because he inspired some, but not all.
36:12: For instance, the example James White gives is this.
36:16: Imagine if I wrote a book.
36:18: I've written three books.
36:20: I know exactly what I've written.
36:25: And I know the three books.
36:28: I know their titles.
36:30: I know my books.
36:32: You don't know my books unless I tell you.
36:37: Right? But that is by the very writing of those books, I produce the canon.
36:47: Even if you never knew.
36:50: Even if I never explained to you or revealed to you any way that I had written, by writing them and producing them, I've created a canon.
36:57: Even if I only know.
36:59: So, the mind of God is such that he knows exactly what he inspired and what he didn't.
37:05: We understand that, right? God knows what he inspired? Yes, yes.
37:09: I mean, that's simple.
37:11: If God knows what he inspired and he wants his people to know what he inspired, then it makes sense that we would know what he inspired.
37:18: That's the point of the artifact.
37:20: It's not a direct revelation.
37:23: It's an artifact of revelation.
37:25: God has used his people and he has used his church and even Israel.
37:31: Prior to the establishment of the New Testament church, God has used his people to affirm what is his word.
37:41: And also to reject what is not.
37:45: You realize there's all types of writings from before Jesus that was never accepted as scripture.
37:50: Think about all the writings of the Jewish mystics.
37:55: There was all types of writings that the Jews never considered scripture.
38:02: Because they knew there were some things that were inspired and some things that were not.
38:06: That's why Paul could say all scripture is inspired because not everything is scripture.
38:14: Okay, as I said, we're going to dig into these a little deeper.
38:17: This is a favorite subject because this is a question that people ask all the time.
38:22: I talk about those two devils all the time.
38:25: Those two girls.
38:26: You've heard the story.
38:28: We had a thing one night.
38:30: It was a fall festival.
38:32: And we asked people not to dress up in scary costumes.
38:35: But we said that kids could wear costumes if they wanted.
38:38: And these two girls came and they were dressed as devils.
38:42: And I sat out there and tried to talk to them about the gospel for a good 45 minutes.
38:47: They were friends of friends of friends who had come.
38:51: And one of the things the girl kept saying was, you don't have any idea if what you're reading today is what Paul actually wrote or what was actually written in the time of Jesus.
39:03: I said, yes we do.
39:05: We have good reason to know that it is exactly what was written.
39:13: And that's what I want you to have that same confidence to be able to answer those questions with a yes.
39:17: There is an affirmative to these questions.
39:20: Okay, number six.
39:23: We're pretty much out of time, but I'll run through these and give you the answers.
39:26: And I'm going to go next week.
39:29: We're going to start fleshing them out a little more.
39:32: Number six.
39:32: The Bible has been copied in its original language.
39:36: Excuse me.
39:37: The Bible has been copied in its original languages, which we refer to as the transmission of Scripture.
39:44: The transmission of Scripture.
39:51: How many copies of Romans did Paul write? I don't know.
39:56: If you knew, that would be cool.
39:57: But I have no idea knowing how many copies that Paul wrote.
40:00: I'm going to assume one.
40:03: Because normally when I sit down and write a letter, I write one.
40:09: I mean, I'm just assuming.
40:11: Now, I could be wrong.
40:11: He could have had 50 copies made.
40:14: But I know that as soon as he wrote it, copies began to be written.
40:19: As soon as he wrote it, copies began to go out.
40:23: In fact, the earliest set of books that went out among Christians in the 1st century were the collective writings of Paul.
40:34: Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, 1st and 2nd Thessalonians.
40:37: All these books were compiled together.
40:39: It was called the Pauline Corpus.
40:41: And it's the earliest collection of books that was circulated within the church.
40:49: And it was being copied in its original language.
40:54: And we have thousands.
40:56: Remember I told you back when we were talking about in the first session, there's over 5,000 handwritten copies of the Greek New Testament.
41:03: Some partial, some pieces of them, some full manuscripts.
41:08: But there's over 5,000 copies in the original language.
41:14: But then, number seven, the science of determining the reliability of copied manuscripts and addressing areas where there are differences is called textual criticism.
41:35: Textual criticism.
41:39: Textual criticism is just like C-R-I-T-I-C-I-S-M.
41:48: Textual criticism, people often have an issue with that phrase.
41:51: Because people say, well, I don't want to be critical of the Bible.
41:52: We're not being critical of the Bible.
41:54: But when we look at 5,700 Greek manuscripts, there's going to be differences in the manuscripts.
42:00: And you have to seek to determine what's the original reading.
42:05: And the goal of textual criticism is to determine what is the actual reading of the text.
42:12: Textual criticism is something I have devoted a lot of time to studying.
42:16: Because when I teach and preach the Bible, I'm teaching and preaching a book that I believe is true.
42:21: But I do believe that in those 5,700 manuscripts, there are times where there's going to be questions.
42:29: And so we have to be able to seek to find the answers to those questions.
42:33: And that's what textual criticism does.
42:35: Now, there is something called higher criticism.
42:38: Higher criticism is not the same as textual criticism.
42:41: If you hear the term higher criticism, that is like the Jesus Seminar.
42:46: Those who seek to not determine what the text originally said, but those who determine whether or not what it said is true.
42:56: You know what I'm saying? What they said, only 16% of what Jesus did, only 18% of what he said is actually true.
43:02: That's a different type of criticism.
43:04: So if you hear people confuse the two, just be careful.
43:08: Higher criticism is those who would criticize the truth of the text.
43:13: Textual criticism is simply seeking to determine the original writing of the text.
43:19: All right.
43:21: Number 8.
43:22: The Bible has been translated into other languages using various specific methodologies.
43:33: I'm actually really looking forward to that lesson, because when we do the translation lesson, I'm going to teach you guys why the English Standard Version, the New American Standard Version, the NIV, the NET, the New English Bible, all these different translations would read the same verse different ways.
43:52: It's because they're translated different.
43:55: And we're going to talk about dynamic equivalency, and essential literalism, and what that means.
44:01: It's going to be a fun lesson.
44:02: I hope you guys are here for that.
44:03: That's something everybody should know, because if you pick up a message Bible, a message Bible talks about Jesus and his toothbrush.
44:15: That's a little bit of an anachronism.
44:20: But you have to understand, that's not even a translation.
44:23: That's a paraphrase.
44:27: This is all part of it.
44:29: I've had people want to argue the Bible out of the message.
44:32: I say, stop, you're not even using a Bible.
44:35: You can't argue the Bible out of a paraphrase.
44:40: Last but not least, number 9.
44:43: God's written revelation culminates, this is the part that really hits us, in a person reading, interpreting, and applying the truth of the Bible to his or her own life.
44:55: That's where revelation hits the individual.
45:00: See, it started back there at Revelation.
45:02: And it's God has revealed Himself through His Word.
45:06: His Word has been written.
45:08: His written Word has been copied.
45:11: That Word has been translated.
45:13: It's been textually examined to ensure accuracy and consistency.
45:18: And it's been given to you in a translated form for you to read, interpret, and apply.
45:26: That's a long process if you think about it.
45:28: God went through a lot to ensure that you knew His Word.
45:34: And so, that's what this series will be about.
45:39: And I know we went a little long tonight.
45:43: But as I said, this is to me, this is a powerful, important stuff.
45:46: And if you know somebody who ain't coming, tell them they ought to be here.
45:53: This is fun and important stuff.
45:55: So let's pray.
45:57: Father in Heaven, I thank You for Your Word.
46:00: I thank You for the truth of it, the consistency of it, the very fact that we know that this is the revealed Word of God, and can stand upon it and be confident in it.
46:10: Lord, help us in the weeks and the months to come to better understand the Word, how we got it, why we trust it, and what it is.
46:19: In Christ's name, amen.